Features of dynamic strain aging in high strength Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy

The present work investigates mainly the regulation and features of the occurrence of serrated yielding phenomenon of a high strength Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy LC4 under various heat treatments and loading conditions. The main results are: (1) In the serrated yielding temperature region a critical transition temperature Tt exists. The critical plastic strain has a negative or positive temperature coefficient within the temperature region lower or higher than Tt; (2) The reason for this phenomenon might be the existence of an absorbed resource which diminishes the pinning effect of solute atoms to mobile dislocations; (3) in the positive coefficient region two reverse thermal activation processes occur simultaneously. One is the solute atoms diffuse to the moving dislocations and pin the dislocations. The other one is the absorbed resource absorbs the solute and diminishes the pinning effect; (4) for LC4, the activation energy of the first process is equivalent to the diffusion activation energy of Mg in Al matrix and the second one is equivalent to that of the interface absorbed solute atoms.